“Unless we determine the key factors that contribute to abortion and concentrate on overcoming them, our energies and resources will be split and split again, as we try to battle all the evils abortion spawns,” Beverly Hadland of Toronto warned Prince Edward Island listeners during a whirlwind lecture tour sponsored by PEI Right to Life.

“The single most important factor leading to increased abortion is revealed by Dr. Morgentaler himself, every time he states that people have a fundamental right to be sexually active outside of marriage,” she said.

Such a lie is only part of a package that includes the following corollaries. To bring an unwanted child into the world is highly irresponsible. Therefore people must be responsible enough to use birth control. But birth control is not 100 percent effective in preventing pregnancy. Therefore hand in hand with the right to sexual activity goes a fundamental right to abortion.

These messages, so at variance with Christian values, are presented in many subtle ways in the schools, and aggressively promoted on university campuses. They manipulate young people by appealing to their still developing sense of responsibility. And they present seemingly logical arguments the young are ill equipped to counter.

Well-meaning though they may be, programs that stress contraceptive use have not reduced the number of pregnancies, though with the help of abortion they have reduced the number of births. Indeed, studies show that within a year 43 percent of women who resort to abortion are likely to be pregnant again. “An atonement baby,” it’s called.

“It is very clear that premarital sex promotes birth control and birth control breeds abortion,” Ms. Hadland sums up. “If we want to stop abortions, we must promote pre-marital chastity. If we can persuade the majority of young people to delay sexual activity until marriage, the abortionists will be out of business.”

It is not enough, she claims, to do as most current school sex education programs do-to recommend that young people postpone sexual activity until a little later when they feel more mature (say from 15 to 16).

“Premature sex gets in the way of real love. At a time when our young people are looking for love, we encourage sex with an abortion backup. They deserve better.”

Ms. Hadland speaks from personal experience of both lifestyles. She herself experienced contraceptive failure and resorted to abortion- twice- before becoming a Christian and turning her life around.

“If I could live my life over. I would not have had an abortion. I would have had the baby. In fact if I could live my life over, I would not have been sexually active.” She says.

This is the message she so convincingly delivers wherever she is given the opportunity to talk to young people. It is a message she is packaging in an educational video scheduled for release in the spring of 1988.

Beverly Hadland’s work with young people has grown out of helping women deal with the aftermath of abortion.

A few years ago she discovered there was no help, no counseling, no support for women experiencing post abortion syndrome. So she left  modeling career and sustained mainly by faith and prayers, established in downtown Toronto a centre for women who need such help.

She finds that often the woman seeking abortion has been cruelly rejected by those she loves, an added distress at a time when she needs loving support more than ever.

“When we talk to the mother,” she cautions, “we must be very careful. If we make her feel that she doesn’t matter- as we might if we talk just about the baby-we can lose them both. The baby is safe as long as we are loving and supporting and caring for the mother.”

In Beverly’s experience a request for abortion is a cry for help, help that an abortion cannot give.” If we take the time to listen to her, we can learn what problems have led her to see abortion as they only possible solution. Almost always, other workable solutions, to those problems can be found. Very often, she will then decide against the abortion.”

Ms Hadland’s visit to Prince Edward Island was covered by local CBC radio and TV, so that a reasonably accurate version of her message reached many who would never have considered attending her lectures.

Another encouraging development has resulted. At the request of a student, guidance counselors in one school district are studying Ms. Hadland’s material with a view to proposing that she be invited to present her chastity message within Island schools.

Whether the proposal will clear all the bureaucratic hurdles, including the equal time for opposing views” trap, cannot be forecast. But it would not even be under consideration except for the initiative of one little girl in Junior High, and the courage of one very convincing young woman from Toronto.